Why no fanfare? Amazon rarely celebrates anyone let alone someone moving on. Mods have come and gone and none were ever introduced or given farewells (AFAIK), or at least haven’t been since the NSFE.
Heck, we as a seller community lost a seller (sudden death), and it took the requesting of sellers to push the mods into posting something.
I’m not sure a seller posting a retirement thread would even be allowed on the NSFE at this point.
Surely you remember the big announcement at the birth of the NSFE when a new flock of baby-bird-mods made their introductions? They all took great pains to describe themselves, their interests (all seemed to like surfing and walking their dog), and their areas of “expertise” on Amazon. All that crap?
I especially recall “Erin,” who was gung ho about so many changes that were coming. And there was Bea and Pax and Gabriel and Mimi and James and Arthur and Abraham and Hannah…
And, as I mentioned, the AMA that a couple mods did before leaving was a nice, humanizing touch, I thought. So there is precedent.
In fact, the further back you go, the more “human” the discussion boards were. I doubt anyone here remembers the very heated battles that Val and Joanne had back in the day. Now that was human and entertaining!
Anyway, so much for the puzzlement over Susan’s quiet departure.
Time to go outside and wait for the first snowflake!
Well maybe if we pave them with pumpkin spice lattes they’ll allow it, given how much they loved to talk about it and even continued that on the NSFE.
I only remember Bea from that batch. IMHO She was the only “new” mod from that time who “did enough” (I recall she paired up with KJ to deal with hijacked listings) to leave a mark on my brain cells. Hope she is doing great wherever she is.
We worked with both Bea and KJ to solve our own hijacking and then several hijackings for other sellers. One could communicate with both SEAmod and Bea without hurting their feelings when pointing out mistakes (and pointing out mistakes was a two way street).
The key here is the NSFE, and I do agree with @Diane on how everyone introduced themselves in the beginning as they joined the NSFE. Waste of time and I suspect that part is long gone.
As for the OSFE, several said their goodbye’s over the years, although now that I think about it, maybe not always publicly (i.e. James). There were so few though that it was very noticeable.
Overall concerning SEAmod … I’ll be watching the NSFE closely, as I have been since this came to my attention, to see if something pops up about her. I have to imagine it won’t be long before something comes out …
OK, yea there were introductions right before the NSFE and I’ll take your word for after NSFE, but I think that was engagement to bury out the fact that were doxxing us all
It makes for a poignant read, on more than one level - not the least of which is the fact that it contains posts from folks who have since gone home.
As noted therein, there was a good deal of eager anticipation amongst our Seller Community for the promise of a brighter future - a promise which, by and large, was subsequently belied by the advent of the NSFE.
I myself was quite enthusiastic about the “New Year, New Voices” Initiative @ the time, avidly linking it multiple times over the following three months after its debut.
Doing so apparently prompted Katie_Amazon to reach out to me directly, via the now-vanquished PM/DM functionality, to begin a private dialog in which she pumped me for advice on what I had, many times, publicly stated that I perceived to be a broad consensus of said Seller Community re: the usefulness of the ASF, and how it might be improved.
I didn’t realize exactly who I was communicating with until several months later, after said Screeching Harpy announced the changes being wrought by the NSFE, and certain of the seasoned & savvy forum vets outed her LinkedIn Profile.
There were indeed other FMT-CMT Mod & AHT SME introductions made in other threads, including after the NSFE’s 012623 full-launch as Diane & Rob mention.
I don’t blame Susan H for creating the above-linked OSFE thread - after all, she wasn’t the one making the decisions, and was only doing her job - but I DO blame Katie, because I agree w/ Pep’s supposition - both about the “New Year, New Voices” Initiative, itself, and the post-NSFE introductions as well:
IMO being a mod on an Amazon forum is a temporary position from which one moves up or moves out.
Susan was/is as different from a typical Amazonian as one gets, older, more experienced and smarter. And not a superficial kiss ass big organization moron.
My memories of mods are limited, my buddy - Darren who was fast tracked up. Lauren who relocated when her husband was stationed stateside. Danny. And of course Susan.
Hopefully, Susan has found a quiet, stable niche somewhere in the Amazon organization. Far away from sleezeballs.
This ^^^ Though in the past the position tended to last a bit longer than what we see nowadays.
I think only a few of us understand how impactful @Darren was. In my mind he really pulled the forums together and organized things. The Lounge did a lot of good.
@Lauren, well I never really had much interaction with her as a Mod.
@Danny (as Admin) created the whole “I got a shirt” fiasco, lol. His time was short lived and he never truly invested himself in the forums, in my mind anyway.
@SEAmod was the longest tenured “Mod” by a long long shot! She came in as a Mod (I’m thinking under @Darren), moved up to US Admin when he moved to another dept., eventually became the Global Admin and even years after being replaced and moving to another dept. continued to advocate for sellers as an Amazonian.
I’ll add this on Susan. I know not everyone had the same point of view on her that I, and many others, had. That’s OK! I was just lucky enough to interact with her on more than several occasions, watch over a decade of posting, listening to sellers on major issues and doing something.
This leads us to @Katie … the FIRST non-interactive Admin in the ASF’s history. Her contributions to the ASF? {… taps plays in the background…}
As is Quincy; some of the other FMT-CMT members who began during the “New Year, New Voices” Initiative that are still posting to the US NSFE include Sandy, Topher, CR, and Danny (who may or not be the “Original Danny” to whom Oneida alludes upthread, just as the Glenn to whom you allude may or may not be the “Original GlennS”).
Some of these folks frequent more than one of the Regional NSFE forums, and a few of the original US cohort now post exclusively elsewhere.
Yes, Susan was brought in by Darren, but she was trained and mentored by Lauren.
I guess the reason I got to know Lauren was she hailed from Massachusetts, though in the south of the state, and she was more open about herself in her public posts than most mods.
At various points in time mods performed multiple jobs. Susan at varying points was also on the Executive Review Team and a support rep. She would take over some of a poster’s cases and deal with them. Seems totally sensible when she was up to speed on the issues.
I’m now pretty convinced that they were all AI-created persona (aka bots). Which would explain their basic-level mistakes and convoluted and inaccurate understandings of…almost everything.
Danny was more involved behind the curtain. He reached out to me via PM when the Account Health category and AHTs were new to the OSFE for feedback, but not being confident that I would be the best single source, we put together a PM with several selected Sellers active with POA help (@oneida_books I know that you were in it, maybe @Roxy, a great handmade Seller I can’t remember, and more!). That PM felt like a place where we were heard, until some snafu–the details of which I am not recalling right now but were probably my fault? I remember Susan joined the PM to sorta fuss at us for pulling in AHTs (who were not mods) into non-AH situations unnecessarily–that lead to its breakdown.
I too got a t-shirt and thank you from Danny–as did SEVERAL active OSFE Sellers! I think maybe @oneida_books, MLH, @lake, and more??? --but I don’t blame Danny for a certain recipient’s bad taste in creating a whole topic to gloat about it.
My interactions with him lead me to believe that Danny was genuinely interested in building the OSFE’s Seller community…which was probably not Amazon’s actual goal with the ASF (thus we now have the NSFE: no real community, all problem threads or trying-too-hard engagement, too many bots and spam, and a lot of out-of-place nastiness).
Wow.
I totally forgot that KJ came at the same time as Bea until you posted this.
Weirdly I always felt like KJ has been around longer or higher up the ladder than the others.
To be fair, KJ actually did begin posting in 2021 - i.e., before Susan posted the above-linked OSFE thread; you can see a reference to that in the mention of the mirthful closing of the “Countdown” thread (and the subsequent replies) in this post from Susan’s thread:
